The Internet is fire for our industry, it can light a torch, or it can burn. It all depends upon the circumstances. Take the case of the lawsuit Echostar has brought against NDS. Yesterday a Swiss magazine ran an article about the hacker in the case, Christopher Tarnovsky. In a matter of hours the article was picked up by Slashdot.

An article runs in a French language publication and hours later surfaces on an American website with an English language summary. This illustrates the speed with which news travels and how the Internet transcends national and even language barriers.

Friday, March 21, 2008

For the more common situation, a move involving an existing layout, prepare by mapping rooms to receive computer or electronic equipment, showing walls, doors, windows, phone/cable/Ethernet jacks and electrical outlets. Plan furniture placement and where to connect. Don't get caught with jacks or outlets behind immovable furniture.

He said that you can generally tell where the architect intended to put furniture by the outlet placement. A living room's long wall with outlets on both ends is meant for the sofa; cable jacks are usually on the opposite wall for TV.

If you ignore these intentions, your creative arrangements may require extension cords, cables or even rewiring.

Of course, plug in extension cords before placing furniture. "Extension cords with flat plugs don't stick out from the wall if you need to put furniture against an outlet," Lathrop said.

Lathrop is the best mover in the area. My family and friends would not consider using anyone else.

Is there any way one can figure out some of the CIA's most highly guarded secrets from a corporate website?

Absolutely.

I’ve done it. (And you can count on it that America’s friends and enemies alike have, too.) ...

... Heckle and Jeckle also brag about a micro-electromechanical facility which becomes particularly interesting in conjunction with their job openings announcements. Reviewing the skill sets they're looking for, it quickly becomes apparent that they design and program their own computer chips, so they're clearly creating proprietary cutting-edge gadgets. It's notable how frequently they're searching for engineers with experience in one of the most miserable operating systems for mobile devices: Windows mobile. They're also regularly seeking programmers versed in another mobile device language: Symbian. Now this information taken in conjunction with their specialty and their prior claims of micro-electromechanical facilities suggests they're designing and creating a lot of mobile, hand held covert communications devices.

And here I'd venture a pure guess that these are probably designed to look like standard run-of-the-mill Treos and other smart phones, blending their “intelligent phones” into the mobile world. The largest consumer of such gizmos is, of course, the CIA's DS&T, adding to suspicions that Heckle and Jeckle is a major DS&T contractor. The primary use of such covert communications gear is for communications with nonofficial cover officers (NOCs) and agents. So the information on Heckle and Jeckle's site suggests that they are likely designing and creating the latest must-have accessories for NOCs and agents, a far cry from the clunky COVCOM gear of yesteryear. (And from the Agency's point of view, knowledge of this would be a serious security breech. Keep in mind the CIA does not even allow contractors to acknowledge their affiliation with the Agency, let alone divulge the programs they are working on, particularly such sensitivities ones.)

Not only have CIA programs been compromised, so have SOCOMs. Judging from the job postings for positions in Florida, Heckle and Jeckle are doing data mining and analytical work for SOCOM. Among other things that can be deduced, they search for relational patterns of terrorist activity and affiliations, looking at a wide array of seemingly innocuous relationships using open source and clandestinely gathered data, particularly focusing upon financial transactional data. I'm betting they have a very sophisticated quantitative model that they're constantly tweaking that underlies this process.

Again, Heckle and Jeckle job postings give us hints to other SOCOM programs. It appears that Heckle and Jeckle are involved in tracking SOCOM assets worldwide. Moving beyond Heckle and Jeckle's own website to other open sources, it's possible to learn some of the specs of related handhelds including whose low-earth orbiting satellites they use. Digging a little deeper, it's also possible to discover the code name of Heckle and Jeckle's RF geolocation program...

Your marketing needs to tell agencies enough so they know what you offer without giving away so much that you compromise national security. Clearly the security agencies need a federal intranet site that had pages for all of the contractors that would be accessible to all federal agencies with a need for such capabilities, but not accessible from the Internet. Your public website should market those products and services that are a matter of public record with some hint that you have additional products and services that are available on a custom basis without going into details.

This is also a perfect example of why security agencies need social media consultants, because clearly while they are reading blogs, they do not understand the implications of social media.

BlogPotomac is this year's premiere social media marketing event for greater Washington DC. Attendees can expect a one-day event with nationally renowned speakers and advanced discussion of best social media marketing practices.

Brian Solis has a post about Diigo, a new sharing tool. I noticed on their site they have pictures of some of their users. That is a very clever idea. I am not sure how applicable it is outside of social media, but very clever.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

SAN DIEGO -- If federal employees do not personally adopt a policy of sharing intelligence information, they may soon face a poor performance review, the government's top information-sharing czar warned Monday at an intelligence conference.

Thomas McNamara, program manager for the Information Sharing Environment, told an audience gathered at the annual Department of Defense Intelligence Information System Conference that a mandate to share information that the intelligence community follows should be extended governmentwide.

Actually it is more important to reward those who do share information and foster it within their agency than punish those who fail to do so. Let civil servants see that sharing information earns you a promotion and it will spread like wild fire.

I'm very happy to announce that Blogdigger has been acquired by Odeo. Over the last few months, I've been working with the folks at Odeo in incorporating Blogdigger's aggregation and search technology into Odeo's new beta site. Along with the acquisition, I've joined the new Odeo team as Vice President of Search and Engineering.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

I am a little late on this one. The Washington Post covered MashMeet DC Remix. Both East Coast Blogging and Peter Corbett were both disappointed with the article. Reporters are considered “professional” employees, exempt from overtime protection. The reason I mention this is that readers should know that anytime a reporter covers an evening event, they are doing so on their own time. Their mere presence at an event is an indication that they think it is important news.

If you are not used to news coverage, it takes some getting used to. I think attendees at the event should be pleased. The event got a nice write up and all the presenting companies got linked. I would be pleased. Congratulations Ogilvy PR on a successful event.

A major reason why Google is so successful on the Web is that websites really, really want to be found.

Almost every search result in the first page of search results for practically every important search has worked really hard to get into that first page. The owners of these websites have worked hard to make their content search friendly. They have worked hard to make their metadata search friendly. They have worked hard to get as many links as possible, knowing that every link increases their search rankings.

Having good search does not mean you shouldn’t have a good classification and navigation. In fact, a good classification will make for even better search results. Search and navigation are interdependent in many ways. People often use search to jump a couple of levels down into a website. Then, they like to navigate.

Technology is an essential driver of innovation and modernity. But the capabilities of a particular technology are nearly always oversold. And within many organizations there are those only too willing to believe that the latest cool technology will magically transform everything.

A great many organizations do not take search management seriously. They do not invest the necessary human and technical resources to increase findability. But at the other extreme, some managers think that all they need to do is choose the right search engine.

Technology on its own will transform nothing. Without human-designed and managed processes that focus on harnessing the technology, no improvements in efficiency and productivity can be made.

Monday, March 17, 2008

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO) announced today that it will sponsor a global competition for digital startups from LaunchBox Digital, a Washington, DC-based investment firm focused on cutting edge mobile and Web technologies. Called “LaunchBox08,” the competition encourages applicants to submit innovative ideas in order to receive seed funding and participate in a 12-week business building program with access to first-rate mentors and advisors.

LaunchBox Digital offers funding to entrepreneurs at an early stage, providing advice and technical support along the way. The LaunchBox08 competition will select six to 10 entrepreneurs from a pool of applicants to receive funding of $15,000 to $30,000.

There was a marked lack of enthusiasm about this on Twitter today, to put it mildly. There seems to be a feeling that they are not seriously interested in local entrepreneurs. $30,000 dollars is not very much money. On the other hand the winners are sure to be featured in the Washington Post and/or Newsweek.

Friday, March 14, 2008

A Web Service is a software component that is described via WSDL and is capable of being accessed via standard network protocols such as but not limited to SOAP over HTTP.

A web service is a software component that does one very specific thing, such as retrieve a customers account number, and is used in combination with other web services to perform certain functions. Web services can be reused, thus are very handy.

The leading players on the web all see the train coming. They are wisely creating APIs and turning themselves into plug-and-play services, not just big destinations. YouTube is just the latest to do so today. Amazon has S3. Google has OpenSocial and an extensive library of APIs. As does Microsoft. Facebook is allowing its applications to live outside the site. Twitter is an API first and (eventually) a business model second. Finally, the booming widget economy shows the promise of small content that can go anywhere.

These are the leaders. But everyone - including marketers - will need to think of their online brands not as sites but as portable services that can go anywhere and everywhere the consumer wants. Without such appendages, no brand will ever be able to break through the online clutter such unlimited choice offers.

In this context the term web services is clear enough. We just need to be careful when we do presentations of what is meant by a term. The context is not always as clear as we assume.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

NEW YORK A group of 50 media companies and organizations, as varied as News Corporation and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, have penned a letter urging Congress to take up a pair of federal shield law bills and enact them as soon as possible.

Almost every scandal in journalism in my lifetime has involved the abuse of anonymous sources. Either reporters are simply making stuff up, or they are serving as a laundromat for false allegations.

The use of anonymous sources makes journalists power brokers, a role that is very sweet to them, if ruinous to their profession. This is not the free flow of information, this is the protection of the news organization as gate keeper of information.

What would really promote the free flow of information would be to enact tough laws protecting whistle blowers.

NEW YORK In just four years the top newspapers in the U.S. have collectively lost about 1.4 million copies in daily circulation, E&P has found. But since the reported numbers come out every six months, the overall decline for individual papers may not hit home for many. Each fall off is usually in the low- to mid-single digits -- but it sure adds up.

In an atmosphere like this editors and reporters will take fewer chances on less than box office stories. It will become harder and harder to place clients.

Monday, March 10, 2008

The New School is a systemic look at dysfunction within information security, and a look at some of the ways people are looking to make things better. We think there's an emerging way of approaching the world, which we call the New School.

I look foward to hearing what other security specialists think of their approach. So much of what is labeled as security has nothing to do with protecting data.

Just as Blackwater had finally fallen from the headlines and the boys in Moyock thought their State Department contract would be quietly renewed, their worst nightmare has hit: Blackwater is a campaign issue.

There is going to be a lot more scrutiny of federal contractors in general and security contractors in particular. As Guy Kawasaki said in a completely different context, the time to make friends online is before you need them.

Friday, March 07, 2008

And in honour of International Women's Day, I thought it worth remembering that there are some fantastic blogs by women -- and what better place to start than with the W-list. If your blog/name is not on the list, then join up here to add your blog to the W Magical List of Women Bloggers. Also check out Wowowow.

Those network efforts will begin expanding further this month, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. Federal authorities hope N-DEx will become what one called a "one-stop shop" enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time.

Government Technology had this story two years ago. Considering that the Pentagon was attacked on 9/11, that the Brentwood Post Office was the one the places affected by the anthrax attacks, that the solving the Beltway Sniper case required unprecedented multi-jurisdictional coordination, you would think that the local editors would take more than academic interest in information sharing.

Well, at least they are beginning to write about it. Maybe in a few years they will discover the importance of Computer Aided Dispatch systems capable of exchanging informaiton.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Some of that technical detail, though, confirmed my worst fears: IT operations at the White House are terrible. The archiving system currently in use is a bad joke. In a big PR problem for IBM Lotus, Congress is also badly miscategorizing Lotus Notes as an obsolete technology, providing a misleading justification for an unfounded migration during a time of war. The cost to manage data recovery is being misrepresented by at least an order of magnitude. And Congress behaves like an old married couple, constantly bickering. That last, at least, is no surprise to anyone.

Like Gilligan's ill-fated three hour tour, this three hour hearing ended badly, with no real resolution. A good hour of the hearing was wasted on a debate between the members about whether an "Interrogatory" of one Steven McDevitt was acceptable to the members.

McDevitt, it turns out, is one of us. He was the IT guy in the White House Office of the Chief Information Officer who was responsible for setting up the new archiving system -- and he was pissed. Apparently, all of his best practices recommendations were ignored.

If the White House PR plan is to stone wall this and hope everyone loses interest, then they are going about it the right way. But I don't think this will work. I think that we are going to be hearing much more about this.